‘People We Meet on Vacation’ Review: Netflix’s Emily Henry Romance

In the midst of a writing funk, travel journalist Poppy (Emily Bader) receives a stern talking-to. “If I don’t at least consider leaving my husband and children after reading your article,” says her disappointed editor, Swapna (Jameela Jamil), “then you are not doing it right.” Poppy’s missives should be filling readers with jealousy at her glamorous life, Swapna reminds her — not pity at how “lonely” Poppy has come to feel flying solo in Prague or Paris or Kyoto.

People We Meet on Vacation, Brett Haley’s mostly winsome adaptation of Emily Henry’s novel, is not much more successful than Poppy in selling the joys of wanderlust; its eyes are turned too longingly toward the comforts of home, wherever (or in whomever) its characters might find it. But as an escape into a romantic fantasy that can’t help but make reality look drab by comparison, it’s just effective enough to make a viewer sigh with envy.

Despite a title that confused many of the people I chatted with at my premiere screening, People We Meet on Vacation is not about the single-serving friends or no-strings flings one might encounter on a voyage. The name refers instead to Poppy (Bader) and Alex (Blyth), who meet each summer for a trip to some far-flung destination.

In the mold of When Harry Met Sally…, these college besties are both unworkable opposites and obvious soulmates. She’s restless, free-spirited and defined, especially in flashbacks, by the sort of quirkiness so aggressive a network marketing team once had to coin a whole new term to describe it. He, on the other hand, is what one character describes, snidely but not inaccurately, as “a bit of a wet lettuce” — uptight and conventional, with dreams barely bigger than settling down in suburban Ohio with his high school sweetheart (Sarah Catherine Hook, The White Lotus).

Nevertheless, the two are unshakably devoted to one other — or were, until a disastrous Tuscan outing in 2024. The script, by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo, jumps between the pair’s possible reconciliation at a Barcelona wedding in the present day and flashbacks to the holidays that have defined their bond over the past decade.

Although the characters bounce from New York to New Orleans to the Canadian wilderness, People We Meet on Vacation makes no particularly persuasive pitch for journeying to new and exciting places. There are no slow pans across luxury hotel rooms nor zoom-ins to mouthwatering meals. Nor are there many interactions with the local population, give or take a scene-stealing appearance by Lukas Gage as a flirty hippie with eyes for Poppy. By Swapna’s standards, this would be a poor travel diary indeed.

But People We Meet on Vacation isn’t meant to be a travel brochure. It’s a romantic comedy, and whatever its flaws elsewhere, it works best where it counts most — in the chemistry between the two leads.

Playing by far the more expressive of the two leads, Bader has the responsibility of channeling all the story’s grandest emotions. But it’s easy work for an actor whose previous job was selling the ambitious insanity of Amazon’s My Lady Jane. With her enormous eyes and quick smile, she grounds Poppy in a sincerity that keeps us on her side even when her wackiness occasionally crosses over from adorable to outright annoying. (Among other sins, she likes to sing loudly to herself at airports.)

Blyth faces the differently but equally difficult challenge of playing the repressed straight man, and his Alex can’t help but look a bit dull against her radiance. Fortunately, any time the character threatens to seem too dull, he’s able to bust out a slick dance move or a well-timed joke to liven him back up. When the two are simply enjoying each other’s company, the happiness coursing between them feels so easy and right that it’s a treat to get to bask in its reflected glow. (When the two start to enjoy each other in steamier ways, People We Meet on Vacation is swift to remind you of the limitations of a PG-13 rating.)

But, as Alex tells Poppy in a pivotal moment, “Love has never been our problem.” It’s the stuff around the central couple that doesn’t always add up — starting with the movie’s lack of curiosity about what their bond, or their lives in general, are like during the 51 weeks of each year when they aren’t jetting off together.

In fairness, this sort of tunnel vision isn’t unique to People We Meet on Vacation. The rom-com canon is full of nonsensical writing assignments and conveniently hidden family histories that exist solely to throw couples together or tear them apart, and no one is likely to ship Alex and Poppy any less because it’s unclear what exactly his PhD is in. (Or, for that matter, to be any less amused by Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck as Poppy’s mortifyingly sex-positive parents because they appear in only one perfect hilarious scene.)

Collectively, however, the lack of detail takes its toll. The appeal of Poppy and Alex’s dynamic lies in how real and relatable it feels, but the characters themselves never come across as people who could continue to exist when we’re not watching. They may be destined for a happy ending, but it’s hard to imagine what a future for them might even look like once they’ve stopped organizing their entire lives around trying to deny the gravitational pull between them.

But even as I write that, I can see it’s a bit like complaining that Bourbon Street is too touristy to be “authentic,” or that staying at an ice hotel is nothing like actually living in Norway: true, perhaps, but entirely beside the point. Trips are fun precisely because they are not real life — because they allow us to slip into a prettier, funner, freer existence for just a spell, and then leave it all behind again before we can get to complaining that the sun’s too strong or the margs way too sweet. People We Leave on Vacation might not be anyone’s idea of a forever home. But it’s a lovely place to visit for a few lazy hours.